Well, I wasn’t able to make it down to PubCon, so unfortunately I’m not speaking.
But at this morning’s keynote by Matt Cutts, he announced a nifty new feature – Google Friend Connect API. It allows for user IDs to be centralized – letting a user login with his/her Google, Yahoo, AOL usernames and more.
I’ve installed it along with @jdevalk’s fancy plugin.
So if you want to test it out, why not log in and leave a comment?
So you’re a business owner. Maybe you’ve been in business just a few months or maybe you’ve been in business for 30 years. Maybe you have thousands of employees or maybe you only have two. No matter if it’s a small business or enterprise business, people need to be able to find you.
Traditionally, customers would find you by looking in the Yellow Pages, seeing your sign as they drive down the street or relying on other’s experiences via word of mouth. That game changed when more and more people began turning on their computers for their researching needs. According to the International Telecommunication Union, over 84% of Canadians are online as of 2008.
If you don’t have a web site, how are these 28 million going to find out about you? Sure, there are local directories. These days you’d be hard pressed to find a business that didn’t appear ANYWHERE on the Internet. But as a business owner, you have an opportunity to control what information people see.
By setting up a web site, you can give information on your products and services, provide an easy way for customers to contact you, publish information that is regularly requested, saving on time and energy spent on repetitive tasks. Become an online portal and central information source on whatever it is you are an expert on.
Be FOUND on the Internet! The web is an incredible resource at your disposal. Make it what you want it to be!
In just a few weeks, I’ll be speaking on two panels at PubCon South – Career Gut Check (SEO/SEM Career Landscape) and SEO Design and Information Architecture.
For the Search Engine Optimization Site Design and Search Engine Optimization Deployment – Information Architecture panel (whew that’s a long name), I will be speaking on a few specific subjects:
So – tell me what you’d be interested in hearing more about. Even if you can’t make it down to Austin next month, I’ll be sure to talk about it more here when I get back.
And if you are going to be there, stop by Salon A at 11:20 on Day 2 (Thursday, March 12) and say hi!
Today at SMX West, the three big search engines (Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft) announced a new tag to help reduce duplicate content on the web.
This new tool is called the “canonical tag”. If you’ve spent some time learning about SEO before, I’m sure you’re familiar with the term. Canonical refers to a page that has more than one URL. For example, the www and non-www versions of your web site are considered different sites. Google has had a tool through Webmaster Tools for some time to help with this, but the announcement of this new tag comes from all three search engines meaning that they *should* all obey it.
How does it work?
Simply enter the canonical tag within the head section of your web page. Within the tag, you can declare the URL that should be indexed and crawled. This will tell the crawlers that any other page with the exact or very similar content should not be indexed and link juice should instead be passed onto the declared URL.
Example:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.lyndseo.com/2009/02/duplicate-content-no-more”/>
Other Tips
This is really exciting news… I only wish I had this information a month ago!
A lot has happened since my last post on December 31, 2008. Most notably, I am no longer working for WestJet Airlines.
I have decided to move back to Winnipeg where my husband and I have family. It’s been a tough adjustment for us in Calgary. We gave it two years, but never really felt settled.
Right now, I’m trying to figure out what that means for me. Either:
A) I look for employment as an in-house SEO
B) I look for employment at an agency
C) I take on clients independently through Lyndseo
Option A is not likely to happen. I’m really anxious to get a chance to work with a variety of companies and industries and have the ability to flex my internet marketing muscles. SEO is most definitely my specialty, but in the past few years I’ve had the opportunity work get my hands dirty in other areas of web marketing as well.
I’m open to suggestions, job opportunities and contract opportunities. You can send me a note through my contact page or come follow me @lyndseo on Twitter!
We’re sitting at the Calgary airport waiting to board our flight to Winnipeg where we’ll spend New Years Eve and the next few days with our friends and family there.
Since I’m just sitting here not really doing anything overly important, I figured I would blog. But I really don’t have anything to blog about at this point in time – at least nothing that doesn’t require turning my brain on to full-strength and come up with something profound or exciting.
So I’ll just wish you all a very Merry Christmas and let you know that my new year’s resolution is to blog more. Hopefully that will keep you coming back. I’m excited about the search and social media opportunities coming up for me in 2009 and really look forward to sharing my experiences with you.
Twitter and brand name squatting
Twitter is finally starting to get some serious recognition as a legitimate social networking tool for companies big and small. And well it should. I’ve been preaching the greatness of Twitter for sometime now, even though I myself have only been an active user for just under a year.
Realizing the positive impact that Twitter can have on a company’s online visibility, I decided that I would start an account for WestJet. When I went to register the account, I wasn’t really surprised to see that @westjet was already taken – WestJet is a major brand here in Canada. Unfortunately, I had yet to hear about any other companies having success reclaiming their brands, and so I contented myself with the account @westjet_sales and went on with my project.
A few weeks ago I decided to see how much it would take to reclaim the @westjet account. I knew I’d have to validate myself somehow, and the obvious strategy was to send Twitter an email from my WestJet corporate email, proving that I’m a real person from the actual company.
Not even 24 hours later, I received a response letting me know that my @westjet_sales account had been transferred to @westjet. Success! And so easy! I am so pleased at Twitter’s stance on this. They want to be taken seriously and they’re making the right moves.
Is your brand name or company name being squatted on Twitter? Just send them an email at support@twitter.com from your company email address and you should have no trouble at all.
If you’d like to read a little bit more about how Twitter squatters are impacting businesses, check out the article “Twitter squatters can hijack your brand” from the Montreal Gazette. I talk a bit about my experience about two thirds into the article.
It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that I’m not much of a writer, given the frequency of updates to this blog. In fact, I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m a numbers girl. Absolutely left-brained. Writing is not my strongest suit.
Does that mean I’m not as good at search engine optimization? Not at all. For all the time I could spend writing blog posts, I instead spend time reading up other people’s content, learning and absorbing as much as I can. I just don’t feel the need to repeat what’s already being said elsewhere.
It often seems to me that to be looked at as a respected player in the industry, one needs to be an active blogger. There’s certainly more awareness of big name bloggers. Maybe that’s just what the Internet is about – how can you prove your skills and knowledge if you’re not posting it for the whole world to see?
I’ll think I’ll just sum it up by saying that those of us that are not so blessed with words definitely still have skill and talent.  Just don’t expect some witty comments… and when we try… please laugh with us and not at us. 🙂
Less than four weeks ago, my American friends celebrated Thanksgiving. I sat at work thinking it would be a very quiet day on Twitter, but in reality it may have been one of the busiest.
I couldn’t believe how many people were actively tweeting about their grand Thanksgiving meals, their delicious Thanksgiving spirits, and the amusing tweets that followed. It was highly entertaining for me, stuck at work drooling over pictures of turkey, mashed potatoes… yummmmm…
And so I expect Christmas to be the same. And I expect to participate as well. Whatever food I’m not having, I can be sure that someone else is. And so the Twitterverse will get to experience many different foods and cultures, all through our computers and phones.
God bless the Internet 🙂
I’ve worked in a wide variety of industries since getting my first job as a dishwasher in a Niagara winery at 15. I’ve seen great management, poor management. Companies of 10,000+ employees, companies of 4-5 employees.
Moving into the new millennium, the buzz words “corporate culture” became more prominent. Now, maybe it just seems that way to me as I finished up with my post-secondary education in 2003, but as I looked at various companies, many seemed to tout their fantastic corporate culture.
In February 2007, I began working for the company that might be the pinnacle of corporate culture – WestJet Airlines. WestJet has won Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Culture award for several years and is an extremely strong brand north of the 49th.
But as I’ve been with them for almost two years I realize that there are so many levels to corporate culture. Particularly for a company with thousands of employees. Perhaps the focus of a great corporate culture goes first to the front-line employees. Makes sense, since these are the people who represent the company day after day to so many people. I can understand that. But I urge companies to remember their corporate staff.
It’s great to have a strong corporate culture. But if you’re going to talk the talk, walk the walk! Make sure every employee in your company is feeling the culture love. Review your missions and values and make sure it still represents who you are and what you represent. And get your employees’ support! They’re the ones who fuel the real culture.
